EXCITING TIMELINE

For two months last year, the cast of the sci-fi adventure Timeline got to be dazed, confused and excited.

This story of time travellers who get stranded in 14th-century France was shot in the countryside near Montreal by Richard Donner, the director of the Lethal Weapon movies.

Donner was adamant that Timeline be shot on sets rather than having the castles and villages added later through computer graphics.

Billy Connolly plays an archeologist who gets stranded in the past as a result of a time-travel experiment. "It was incredible working on those sets," says Connolly. "It's like the way they used to make movies. Not all this green-screen stuff where you have to imagine what some computer guy is going to add five months down the line."

In one scene, English troops are leading Connolly and hundreds of French villagers away as their town is burning.

"It didn't take much to get into character. They actually burned the town. It was emotional because we'd worked for weeks on that set," recalls Connolly.

Later, he is imprisoned in a besieged castle.

"The special effects people were hurling fireballs at the castle. It was scary and exciting.

"For a few weeks we were working in this castle that was built to scale. During the battle they blew a lot of it up, reducing it to ruins that were just as realistic."

DREAM TIME

For Paul Walker, who plays Connolly's son, Timeline was a dream come true.

"When I was a kid, every stick became a sword and I dreamed of becoming a knight."

For Walker, there was one major disappointment.

While others are fighting it out on the castle battlements, Walker is rushing through an underground tunnel to help rescue prisoners inside the castle.

"I can assure you, I wasn't in those tunnel sets between takes," says Walker.

"I was sword-fighting with the extras. I'd borrow someone's sword until the armour people made me my own.

"It was three weeks before the end of shooting when they presented me with a newly minted sword with my name engraved on it.